Is it just me, or is the full list of people Dick Cheney met with as part of his energy task force almost laughably un-scandalous. There's a lot of polluting energy company executives here! Plus folks from some smaller green firms! And a few people from environmental groups. Plus members of congress from both parties. Superficially, this actually seems like the sort of process that might have produced an okay energy policy. Except, at the end of the day Bush and Cheney just did what their campaign contributors in the oil, gas, coal, etc. sectors wanted them to do.
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Task Force Meetings
18 Jul 2007 10:02 am
Comments (13)
Who would you consider scandalous? Ken Lay is there, and in 2001-2003 he was as scandalous an anyone.
Plus, your expectations for Bush administration scandal have certainly changed since then.
Matt, read the article, not the list. The policies in question were drafted with the industry input; they met with some token environmentalists after it was a done deal.
After the policy was developed they staged a series of meetings for all the enviros over two days. Cheney didn't show up. The environmental groups knew they'd been had.
The article makes a valid point, but the list is indeed un-scandalous. It's simply Cheney's secrecy fetish at work here; how many of your tax dollars were spent in the legal fight to make sure you weren't allowed to see the un-scandalous list of people your elected leaders met with? And oops, now you know anyway. Ridiculous.
This was never about who Cheney met with; it was about setting the precedent that he would not be subject to oversight.
You gotta look at the timing ... the enviros were brought in on April 2, after all the real work had been done.
I think that the standards of what constitutes "scandal" have changed due to the conduct of this administration over the ensuing 6 years.
When people were clamoring for this list in early 2002, Ken Lay was about as scandalous as it gets. Just because everyone suspected that the worst possible guy would show up on the list (apart from Lucifer or possibly Bin Laden), and he then appeared on said list does not make this kosher.
If Ken "Burn Baby Burn" Lay isn't scandalous for the Bush administration, who would be scandalous?
Sorry, my first comment didn't show up, and I thought the problem was on my end. Obviously, that was the case.
As numerous commenters (Anderson, Bloix, Blake) have noted, what makes this scandalous is that the energy policy had already been decided by the time the token greenies were invited. Inviting the folks from the renewable firms and the environmental groups was a dog and pony show -- nothing more than a charade. What's actually a bit remarkable is that, given the fact Cheney had no intention of letting the public in on who was involved, that he bothered to even invite anyone outside of Big Oil and King Coal.
What's actually a bit remarkable is that, given the fact Cheney had no intention of letting the public in on who was involved, that he bothered to even invite anyone outside of Big Oil and King Coal.
Suggests that Cheney, et al., knew the executive privilege assertion might not hold up and so they papered the record a bit just in case.
Also note that he met with the industry people in many different meetings, giving them more face time. But he met with the enviros or the efficiency peoplem, he stuffed each group in one meeting -- surely decreasing the amount of real face time each person got. It's like he thought -- I've got to act like I met with these tree huggers, so stick them all in one meeting. I bet he had a cardboard cut-out of himself there too.
But what about the rumours that---even as far back as this---they put up a map of Iraq on the wall, and discussed which energy company was going to get which province?
The information here still seems very vague.
Comments closed August 01, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
I've always thought that Cheney is protective of that report and wants to keep it secret because it contains incriminating evidence that the assault on Iraq was indeed launched for oil.
Posted by global yokel | July 18, 2007 10:24 AM